Friday, August 16, 2013

“The United Republic of Soybeans.” That’s the patronizing moniker given
to the entire Southern Cone − comprising the countries of Brazil,
Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia − by the Syngenta Corporation
in a 2003 advertisement in the rural supplements of the Argentine papers
Clarín and La Nación. It’s an open statement of the neocolonialist
fervour with which these companies are attempting to dominate this
region of the world.
In 2012, the agribusiness transnationals really stepped up their
campaign to control these countries and their institutions. They
launched new genetically engineered (transgenic or GE) crops involving
increased health and environmental hazards because of the agrotoxins
(pesticides and herbicides) that have to be applied with them. They also
lobbied for policy changes that are without precedent except for the
initial GE onslaught in the second half of the 1990s. This new corporate
drive comes in a troubling new context in which almost all the
governments of the region (at least until June of last year) were
“progressive” critics of neoliberalism. These governments have begun to
rectify some of the neoliberal policies adopted in the 1990s, with the
government taking a more active role in regulating the economy and
providing for social welfare, education, and healthcare.
However, in all this time, the prevailing model of agricultural
production has not changed. There has been no official concern about the
problems caused by the widespread planting of transgenic soybeans and
the high levels of agrotoxins this requires. On the contrary, this model
continues to be consolidated and defended by all of the region’s
governments, which have adopted it as government policy in every case.
At best – and only when societal pressure becomes too great – they have
given slapdash consideration to the problems of agrotoxin poisoning,
displacement of peasants and first peoples, land concentration, and loss
of local production. But these are considered “collateral impacts.”
(Bolivia is excluded from this assessment, since although the
“half-moon” region of Santa Cruz de la Sierra sits within the territory
dubbed the “United Republic of Soybeans,” the government of Evo Morales
has taken widely divergent positions from the rest of the governments.
This has led to conflict with Santa Cruz power brokers who have called
for the region to separate from the country).
In previous issues of Against the grain (123),
we have criticized the soy incursion as serving to consolidate the
agribusiness model of production. The Southern Cone has become the
region with the highest concentration of GE crops in the world and, in a
closely related development, the region with the highest per capita
application of agrotoxins. In this issue, we will explore the soy
phenomenon and its implications for peasant communities and society as a
whole.
The profound impacts of the agribusiness model know no borders between
rural and urban. In rural areas and outer suburbs they are measured in
terms of agrotoxin poisoning, displaced farmers (who swell the ranks of
the urban poor), ruined regional economies, correspondingly high urban
food prices, and contamination of the food supply. Ultimately, what we
are looking at is a social and environmental catastrophe settling like a
plague over the entire region. Wherever you live, you cannot ignore it.
The handful of people and companies responsible for this chain of
destruction have names: Monsanto and a few other biotech corporations
(Syngenta, Bayer) leading the pack; large landowners and planting pools
that control millions of hectares (Los Grobo, CRESUD, El Tejar, Maggi,
and others); and the cartels that move grain around the world (Cargill,
ADM, and Bunge). Not to mention the governments of each of these
countries and their enthusiastic support for this model. To these should
be added the many auxiliary businesses providing services, machinery,
spraying, and inputs that have enriched themselves as a result of the
model.
To put some numbers on the phenomenon, there are currently over 46
million ha of GE soy monoculture in the region. These are sprayed with
over 600 million litres of glyphosate and are causing deforestation at a
rate of at least 500,000 ha per year.

While the regional impacts of this model tend to occur in
interconnected fashion, we will attempt to break them down for further
analysis. This analysis takes place against a backdrop of a coup d’état
in Paraguay, where the powers that be have shown their intentions most
abruptly and nakedly. But this coup was intended to set an example for
the entire region. The idea was to show them the “right path” and the
consequences of straying from it.Agribusiness and murder
This has been a constant in the region in recent years. As mentioned,
Paraguay is where the most brutal impacts have been felt. Perhaps the
worst incident was the Curuguaty massacre on 15 June 2012 when 11
peasants and six police officers died as a result of open conflict
between peasants, paramilitaries, and the government. The massacre was
the pretext for the institutional coup d’état that put an end to
president Lugo’s administration.
Prior to the coup, and continuing afterward, a wave of repression
against peasant leaders took place. This has morphed into selective
assassinations that have taken the lives of Sixto Pérez (1 September
2012 in Puentesiño, Concepción Department), Vidal Vega (1 December 2012
in Curuguaty, Canindeyú Department), and Benjamín Lezcano within a space
of eight months following the inauguration of new president Federico
Franco.4
CONAMURI, the national rural and indigenous women’s confederation, has
stated that the same modus operandi was used in the three cases and that
the goal seems to have been the same in each: to decapitate the peasant
leadership.5

In Argentina, three peasants have been murdered in Santiago del Estero
in the last three years (Sandra Ely Juárez, Cristian Ferreyra, and
Miguel Galván), all in connection with the soybean industry. Elsewhere,
communities in the provinces of Formosa and Salta have been subjected to
ongoing harassment.6
In Brazil too the peasant movement, and especially the Landless
People’s Movement (MST), has been hit with agribusiness violence.
Recently, the Comisión Pastoral de la Tierra (CPT) released a
preliminary report on the violence in 2012 that tabulates 36 deaths due
to agrarian conflict.7
Already this year, three MST leaders have been assassinated (Cícero
Guedes dos Santos, Regina dos Santos Pinho, and Fabio dos Santos Silva).
This is all taking place as part of a broader drive to criminalize
social movements. Not only are the movements persecuted and stigmatized
informally, but they are also targeted by repressive laws. Argentina in
December 2011 passed an antiterrorism law that joins a number of similar
laws already existing in countries of the region.Agribusiness and agrotoxin poisoning
One of the big lies told by the corporations, the media, and certain
elements in academia to justify the introduction of GE seeds was that
they would help reduce the use of agrotoxins. As many peoples’
organizations have repeatedly shown, the reality is exactly the
opposite. Today, the rise in the use of agrotoxins is alarming, and
their impacts on the entire region are increasingly difficult to hide.
None of this should surprise anyone who realizes that genetically
engineered seeds are being promoted by the same corporations that sell
agrotoxins, with Monsanto in the lead. In fact, herbicide-resistant
crops are by far the most popular transgenic product on the market.
By 2008, Brazil had become the world’s largest per capita consumer of
agrotoxins, accounting for 20% of all agrotoxins used on the planet. Per
capita consumption was 5.2 litres of agrotoxins per year.89
The frightening figure of 853 million litres of agrotoxins used in
2011, with 190% growth in the Brazilian market in the last decade,
speaks volumes. Of this total, 55% of agrotoxins are sprayed on soybeans
and corn, with soy alone accounting for 40% of the total.10 Glyphosate accounts for about 40% of agrotoxin consumption in Brazil.
Argentina is keeping pace. In 2011 a total of 238 million litres of
glyphosate were sprayed, for a whopping 1190% increase over 1996, the
year herbicide-tolerant transgenic soy was introduced into the country.11
In Paraguay, the world’s sixth largest soybean producer, glyphosate use in 2007 amounted to over 13 million litres.12
In Uruguay, where transgenic soy is also making inroads, at least 12 million litres were used in 2010.13
Uruguay is in fact the country where, due to drinking water
contamination in the city of Montevideo, the urban population is
beginning to react with alarm.
Taking stock of the region, it can be surmised that at least 600
million litres of glyphosate are being sprayed every year. This
frightening figure has translated into the filing of innumerable
complaints by people who have seen their health, ecosystems,
agriculture, and communities be degraded by these agrotoxins.

Glyphosate, widely promoted by Monsanto for its supposedly low toxicity, is now under much closer scrutiny:
- The impact on communities is now impossible to hide. Thousands of
people living in the “sprayed communities” are complaining of new health
problems caused by pesticide applications, including birth defects,
acute fatal poisonings, respiratory problems, neurological diseases,
cancers, abortions, skin diseases, and others.
- Independent scientific research confirms these grave findings.
Studies linking glyphosate to tumours and deformities in embryos have
been published in the most prestigious journals in recent years.
- The health effects of the so-called “inert” ingredients used in
Roundup, most notoriously the surfactant polyoxyethylene amine (POEA),
have also been demonstrated. POEA is associated with gastrointestinal
and central nervous system disorders, respiratory problems, and
depressed red blood cell counts.
- The environmental harms caused by glyphosate have also been amply
confirmed by both research and experience. Glyphosate is unquestionably
linked to destruction of biodiversity, as in the peer-reviewed studies
showing its toxic effects on amphibians.

As alarming as these figures may be, of even greater concern is the
rising use of other agrotoxins in combination with glyphosate, often to
compensate where weeds have become resistant to it. For example, 1.2
million litres of paraquat are now being sprayed in Argentina every
year, and 3.32 million litres over the five soy-producing countries
combined. Paraquat is linked to neurological disorders and for this
reason was banned in 13 countries of the European Union in 2003.14
No doubt about it, agrotoxins are another piece of the murderous agribusiness picture.Agribusiness and the imposition of genetic engineering
The introduction of new GE crops linked to the use of new agrotoxins is
part of the corporations’ strategy and has been since 2012.
Argentine President Cristina Fernández’s announcement of new Monsanto
investments in Argentina at the Council of the Americas meeting on 15
June 2012 gave notice of the official and corporate agenda to be rolled
out in the following months, including a tidal wave of projects,
announcements, and attempts to change national legislation.
In August 2012, Minister of Agriculture Norberto Yahuar stood next to
Monsanto executives and announced the approval of the new “Intacta” rr2
soy, which combines glyphosate resistance with Bt production. Nothing
new here, except to combine the only two crop traits the biotech
industry has managed to put on the market in its twenty years of
existence.
But other transgenics have been approved for field trials, including
soy and corn resistant to more dangerous herbicides such as glufosinate
and 2,4-D. Andrés Carrasco, a researcher at the Argentine National
Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), stated the problem
clearly a few months ago: “Five of those ten approved transgenic events
[crop varieties] in Argentina, three of corn and two of soybeans,
combine resistance to glyphosate with resistance to glufosinate ammonium
[an inhibitor of synthesis of the amino acid glutamine]. The need to
combine these two types of resistance in the new seeds shows up the
inconsistencies in GE technology, in terms of both construction and
behaviour over time. Yet instead of rethinking this approach,
agribusiness keeps on trying to fix the problems with increasingly
dangerous applications of the same GE technology.”15
In Paraguay, just months after the institutional coup d’état, the
Ministry of Agriculture approved a transgenic maize variety that the
deposed government had been resisting and the peasant organizations had
been expressly rejecting, due to the threat it poses to the many local
varieties of maize grown by indigenous and peasant farmers. In October
2012, four varieties of transgenic maize manufactured by Monsanto, Dow,
Agrotec, and Syngenta were approved.16
By August, de facto president Franco had revealed his true constituency
by issuing an executive order allowing Roundup Ready Bt cotton seeds to
be imported.
In Brazil, the escalation began in late 2011 with the announcement by
the National Biosafety Technical Commission (CTNBio) of the first
commercially grown GE bean variety “entirely developed in Brazil” and
resistant to bean golden mosaic virus. This event, because it was
developed by a public institution (Embrapa) and possesses different
traits from the most widespread GE crops (Bt and rr), and because it
concerns a staple food of lower-income people, became the poster child
of “socially conscious” genetic engineering.17
However, this approval has been challenged by public officials, the
scientific community, and civil society. Renato Maluf, President of the
National Food and Nutritional Safety Council (Consea), invoked the
precautionary principle in stating his concerns about the hasty release
of this variety. “We think it showed a lack of precaution to release a
product that the whole population will consume when we don’t have
certainty about its food safety and nutritional value,” he said.
Similarly, Ana Carolina Brolo, legal counsel to the humanitarian
organization Tierra de Derechos, indicated that “this GE crop approval
was characterized by a lack of respect for domestic and international
biosafety rules”.18
As has always been the case, the new GE crops depend on the use of
agrotoxins to a very large extent. Some, such as glyphosate, are already
in widespread use while other more toxic ones – dicamba, glufosinate,
2,4-D – are now being introduced. In Brazil, the Small Farmers’ Movement
(MPA), a Via Campesina member, revealed in April 2012 that
2,4-D-resistant soy and maize were slated for approval.19 These seeds are already being grown experimentally in Argentina.Agribusiness and control over seeds
New seed laws are being steamrollered over Latin America. Argentina has
been particularly targeted as a direct result of its agreement with
Monsanto. The same day that the Minister of Agriculture announced the
approval of “Intacta” soybeans, he sent a new seeds bill to Congress
with instructions that it be passed before 2013.
The bill was never made public nor subjected to any in-depth debate. It
was discussed behind closed doors in the Ministry of Agriculture by
elements of Argentine agribusiness. Yet its content transcends the
agriculture ministry and confirms what the official announcement
intimated: the bill will subordinate domestic seed policy to the
dictates of UPOV 20 and the transnationals.
The National Indigenous Peasant Movement (MNCI) presented a cogent
criticism: “The bill does not protect knowledge or biodiversity. It
promotes privatization and protects ownership over the collective
heritage of our peoples, especially peasant communities and indigenous
peoples. It opens the doors to more extensive expropriation and
privatization of agricultural and wild biodiversity in Argentina. It
criminalizes or greatly restricts practices in effect since the
beginnings of agriculture; i.e., freely selecting, breeding, obtaining,
saving, reproducing, and exchanging seeds from the previous harvest. It
sets the stage for the continued introduction of new genetically
engineered crops, and the expansion of existing ones, by granting
ownership over varieties without requiring proof of quality but simply
on the basis of the existence of a trait. And, it gives the seed
companies the power to police compliance with the provisions of the
bill”.21
Thanks to organizing by various sectors, the tabling of the bill in
Congress has been postponed, but the threat of its passage still looms.
Quite clearly, control over seeds – the basic unit of agriculture – is
one of the main goals of the corporations. In this way, they hope to
gain control over the entire agrifood system and build an unshakable
monopoly. It is equally clear that such control would directly impact
all human beings, preventing them from exercising food sovereignty and
condemning millions to hunger.Agribusiness and forest destruction
Deforestation throughout the region has intensified dramatically.
Measures designed to rein it in (such as the Forests Act in Argentina
and various regulations adopted in Brazil) have failed to stop it. The
main cause is the advance of the agricultural frontier (often pushing
the ranching frontier ahead of it).
As in the past, Brazil leads the pack with a net 28 million hectares of lost forest in the decade from 2000 to 2010.22 Between August 2010 and July 2011, 641,800 hectares of Amazon forest were lost,23 a fact triumphantly celebrated by the national authorities.
In Argentina, the figures (from official and NGO sources) were as
follows: between 2004 and 2012, the logging machines destroyed 2,501,912
hectares, an area 124 times that of the city of Buenos Aires. Put
another way, Argentina is destroying 36 football fields worth of forest
every hour. The last Ministry of the Environment report, covering
2006-2011, found that 1,779,360 hectares of native forest had been
destroyed during this period.24
In Paraguay, the deforestation picture is perhaps the most serious. On
the one hand, historical deforestation (1945–1997) for agriculture
caused a loss of 76.3% of the original forest cover in the eastern
region.25
On the other, current deforestation in the western region culminated in
2011 with a loss of 286,742 ha of forest, a 23% increase over the
figure of 232,000 ha deforested during 2010.26
A global look at this tragedy gives a better idea of the dimensions of what is occurring. An FAO study published in 201127
found that the average annual worldwide net loss of forest between 1990
and 2005 was around 5 million ha − and 4 million of that is taking
place in South America.
Here again, agribusiness is making a killing in the literal sense: it
is killing the unique ecosystems of the region, and thereby the peoples
who have cohabited with the forest for millennia.Agribusiness and land consolidation
Land consolidation is another phenomenon that has characterized the
introduction of GE soybeans throughout the Southern Cone. Land
concentration was already a serious problem in these countries, but it
has gotten much worse.
Paraguay, already among the Latin American countries with the most
unequal land distribution, saw this situation escalate to the point
where today, 2% of owners control 85% of the farmland. The regional
situation is worse when one considers that the neighbouring countries –
Brazil especially but also Argentina – are also experiencing land
concentration for transgenic soybeans.

- In Paraguay, in 2005, 4% of the soybean growers occupied 60% of total area planted to this crop.
- In Brazil, in 2006, 5% of the soybean growers occupied 59% of the total area planted to this crop.
- In Argentina, in 2010, over 50% of the soybean production was
controlled by 3% of producers, who occupied farms over 5000 ha.
- In Uruguay, in 2010, 26% of producers controlled 85% of soybean
land. That same year, 1% of growers controlled 35% of soybean land.

The soybean model has profoundly transformed the way in which land is
concentrated. Today, most land is not purchased but leased by the large
producers. These “producers” are not physically identifiable persons but
pools, financed for the most part by speculative investment groups.
The consequences for local, peasant, and indigenous communities are
always the same: expulsion from their land, in many cases with physical
violence, as discussed above.
Figures on land expulsion are hard to come by, since there are no
official statistics for any country of the region. However, researchers
have found that in Paraguay, the agribusiness soybean steamroller, in
its push to control 4 million ha of land, has displaced 143,000 peasant
families. That’s more than half the farms under 20 ha recorded in the
agricultural census of 1991.29
For Argentina, this model has provoked an unprecedented rural exodus
which, by 2007, had expelled more than 200,000 farmers and their
families from the land (26). In Brazil, starting in the 1970s, soy
production displaced 2.5 million people in the state of Paraná and
300,000 in the state of Río Grande do Sul.30Agribusiness: meet the new dictator
The institutional coup d’état in Paraguay shows how agribusiness –
basically transnational corporations in cahoots with large landowners –
is unwilling to be held back by whatever timid restrictions the national
governments may try to impose.
In Paraguay, the Lugo government, though it had a parliamentary
minority, was trying to set some limits on some of the worst aspects of
industrial agriculture. Initiatives carried out by the ministries of
health and environment and by the National Phytosanitary and Seed
Service (Senave) sought to rein in the use of agrotoxins and the
approval of new transgenics, especially Roundup-Ready maize and Bt
cotton. The government also initiated dialogue with peasant
organizations to try to put a stop to the long-running violence in the
countryside as a result of land concentration.
The powerful agribusiness sector grouped under the UGP, with the
support of Monsanto, Cargill, and other transnationals declared war on
the authorities responsible for these initiatives, publicly calling for
their ouster. The Curuguaty massacre was the excuse they found to
overthrow President Lugo with the help of their allies in Congress. A
two-hour session was all it took to bring in a new government favourable
to their interests.
It was not just a change of president: with Lugo went all the public
officials responsible for these positive initiatives. In short order
they were replaced by agribusiness-friendly officials and measures. The
proposed restrictions on spraying, new transgenics, and Seeds Act
amendments vanished.
With the recent election of Horacio Cartés, the Colorado Party is back
in power. Impunity for the coup plotters and free rein for agribusiness
are the order of the day.
In the other countries of the region the situation is different. While
the crude reality of Paraguay is not in evidence, it is also clear that
agribusiness is making headway with its preferred policies and
interfering with attempts to derail them.
The upshot is plain for all to see: democracy is incompatible with
corporate control. We must demolish the structures allowing for
agribusiness to take control over our resources if we wish to live in a
democracy where the common good is preserved.Agribusiness control over research
Universities and research institutes throughout the region, with a few
honourable exceptions, have been colonized by the power and money of the
agribusiness corporations. These corporations are using the research
facilities as a mechanism through which to introduce genetically
engineered crops and industrialized production models.
In 2012, it became public knowledge that Monsanto and the National
Agricultural Research Institute of Uruguay (INIA) had signed an
agreement to include company-owned transgenes in local soy germ plasm
handled by the Institute.31
This agreement was publicly challenged by the National Rural
Development Commission (CNFR), which represents family farmers on the
INIA Board of Directors. It also came under fire from a number of civil
society organizations, including REDES-Amigos de la Tierra. The
agreement, whose text has not been made public, became the subject of an
access to information request by elected members of the Frente Amplio
(FA).
After the coup in Paraguay, the new minister of agriculture, Enzo
Cardozo, announced that Paraguay would be producing its own GE seeds and
making them available to all farmers. The seeds would be bred by the
Paraguay Institute of Agricultural Technology (IPTA), which would
receive a “technology transfer” from Monsanto upon payment of an amount
to be agreed upon by de facto president Federico Franco.32
But Monsanto has already been operating under “cooperation” agreements
for many years with public institutions in Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay,
and Brazil. It uses the research institutions as cheap scientific
labour and as an agricultural extension channel for getting its seeds to
farmers. Likewise, many public officials act as the ideological arm of
the corporations. A paradigmatic case is that of Argentine science and
technology minister Lino Barañao, who loses no opportunity to lobby on
behalf of genetically modified agribusiness.Agribusiness: another type of mining
Industrial agriculture is like mining in that it considers soils to be
an inert substrate from which nutrients (proteins and minerals) can be
extracted with the addition of technology and chemicals. It has no use
for soils as living organisms nor does it ever restore the nutrients
extracted.
The soil mining aspects of agriculture are expressed most brutally in
genetically engineered soybean cropping. All the propaganda about
“no-till” agriculture cannot hide the crude reality that soybeans do not
even remotely return to the soil all the nutrients that they extract,
nor can no-till methods sustain the soil’s structure and water retention
capacity.
In previous reports we have discussed how Argentine soils are being
degraded, with millions of tons of nutrients and billions of litres of
water being taken away.33

Here are a few figures for Argentina alone (the numbers are not available for the other countries):
Soybean monoculture without crop rotation causes intense soil
degradation, with a loss of 19 to 30 tons of soil depending on
management techniques, slope, and weather.
Soybean growing in 2006/2007 (which yielded 47,380,222 tons) involved a net extraction of:
- 1 148 970.39 tons of nitrogen;
- 255 853.20 tons of phosphorus;
- 795 987.73 tons of potassium;
- 123 188.58 tons of calcium;
- 132 664.62 tons of sulphur, and
- 331.66 tons of boron.
Each exported annual soybean harvest also removes 42.5 billion cubic metres of water (data from 2004/2005 season).

Agribusiness and its corporate media partners
The agribusiness colonization of the region can count on a powerful
ally to back it up: the corporate media. The media act as the
unconditional communication arm of agribusiness (in return for payment
of millions of dollars to buy advertising that fills newspaper pages and
radio and television hours).
This agribusiness-media collaboration is designed to convey the following messages:
- The myth that agribusiness is the panacea for world food production
problems. The ideas of “progress,” “development,” and societal
well-being are deliberately being confused with agribusiness interests.
- The myth that agribusiness is somehow involved with “sustainable
development.” Media propaganda turns any agribusiness initiative into a
generous act of “sustainable development” by ignoring its real effects.
- The myth that there are no downsides to agribusiness. All discussion
or information about societal resistance, scientific or economic debate,
or impact on communities and the environment is excluded from corporate
media reports.
- The image of social movements as subversive, violent, antisocial, or
“stuck in the past.” In this way, these movements are stigmatized and in
some cases even criminalized.
Paraguay is perhaps the country where this alliance is most obvious.
The UGP is linked to the Zuccolillo Group, owner of the powerful daily
ABC Color. This was one of the papers calling most stridently for
President Lugo’s ouster. In addition, Zuccolillo is president of the
Inter American Press Association (IAPA).34Agribusiness and climate change
The links between industrial agriculture and the global climate crisis
have been amply demonstrated. The figures are alarming: at a minimum,
between 44 and 57% of greenhouse gases are due to the agroindustrial
chain of production.
It is obvious that a region where industrial agriculture has become so
dominant has got to be a major contributor to this global crisis. But it
is also clear throughout the region that the conjunction of global
problems with local ones such as deforestation is causing severe
impacts. Rural areas are experiencing prolonged cycles of drought and
flooding. Cities lack the infrastructure to deal with these
unprecedented rainfall patterns. The main victims are the urban poor, a
large percentage of whom are former peasants from plundered communities.
While there is still a great degree of fragmentation among social
movements, it can also be said that they are all attempting to adopt a
comprehensive analysis and avoid piecemeal struggle. They all understand
that food sovereignty, autonomy, and protection of the common good must
be the central themes of any campaign against agribusiness.
It is our hope that this edition of Against the grain will plant new
seeds of struggle in the Southern Cone, and that they will grow into a
powerful movement.

20
UPOV - the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants – is an organisation that promotes legislation protecting patents
on plant genes and plant breeders' rights, to the detriment of
indigenous and peasant farmers ownership, use and exchange of seeds.